Evaluation Question 6

Evaluation Question 1

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

My planning for Question 1 :) 

Evaluation Question 2

Social Groups


I asked my peers a series of questions about how particualr social groups are presented. Her is what they had to say :) :

Evaluation Question 3

Evaluation Question 4

I have created a Facebook profile for a member of my target audience. He is 17 years old and my film's target audience is 15-19 year olds. Aaron is a member of the public who I'd hope would be able to relate to my movie.

I made this status to portray Aaron as a teenage male, who understands the idiolect of the 'streets' we used language that youths who grow up in places such as council estates and 'rough areas' would understand (stereotype). Words such as 'dun'kno'. In my film words such as 'wasteman' are used, these language is used within gang culture. 

I have made Aaron upload images of people using illegal drugs. This is another way that he can relate to my film as drugs play a big role in my film. 

I made this status to show that members of my target audience can in fact relate to my film, as 'Aaron' said he could relate to the 'drugs' 'gang culture' and 'violence'. 

Evaluation Question 5

How did you attract/address your audience?

This is a poster I made on phtoshop. It may intice my target audience of teenagers to watch my film as the use of drugs is obviously portrayed and some teenagers may be able to relate to drug use.

"Shot caller claims to tell the shocking dark secrets of the 'grime' generation. They did a splendid job of this. Producers took into consideration the harsh realities that could lie within many youths lives. This film was executed very well. One to watch!!

 
"Fighting, boozing and drugs - your average 24 hours for East London teenagers. It will ruffle feathers but shot caller is a refreshing slice of urban life."

 Heres a facebook like page for 'Shot Caller'. It is public on Facebook and is a place where our audience can find out more about the film/competitions etc. We also use this page to post new pictures and videos so our audience can directly engage with the film.

 

 

A member of our target audience engaging with the film.

Evaluation Question 7

 

What have I learnt?

From the start of the college year I have learnt an awful lot in relation to media. Although I did media at GCSE I have distinguished between the difficulty of this and A-level. I had not heard of programs such as Motion, Final Cut Pro and I had never made a blog in my life. I now know how to use all of these programs and many more and how to use different equipment such as: flip camera, JVC camera, fig rig and a tripod. Even though I was faced with difficulties at first, I overcame them with the help of my lovely teachers. Overall, I would say I understand the many different conecepts of media in depth. 

 

Problems We Faced

We faced some problems, especially with our first rough cut. The shots were very shaky as we did not know how to use the tripod yet.

Also picking a storyline was a challenge as we had to chose something that would appeal to our audience males (15-18). However after weeks and weeks of planning we decided to come up with oyr Final story 'Shot Caller'

We also had times when we were not able to all meet up at the same time and this stressed us out a little bit, but it all worked out in the end, thank goodness!
With our second rough cut we did not realise until after that some shots were unfocused, this made our movie look really bad, therefore we removed those shots.

Picking music was also a difficult task due to copyright reasons, we were unable to use many of our desired song choices because they were not copyright free, however we managed to find covers of the original songs we liked that also sounded cool. :)

What I Am Hoping For When People Watch My Movie

I hope teenagers that view our teen movie in college are effected by the story line as it is a rather harsh one.
Scenes include drugs, bullying and parenting issues. All these issues are as important as each other and when watching the movie I hope people who are going through some of the same issues perhaps can relate and seek help in the real world.
These actions lead to negative things in the future. It is not a comedy, it is a realistic drama and people that view it may appreciate its realism.

What I Learnt

I learnt many, many things through this filming task!
I learnt how to use equipment such as;

• Tri-pod
• Camera
• Flip camera
• Camera light
• Fig Rig

All of which I hadn't used on a professional level such as this, it may seem easy but it proved to be rather difficult to get to grips with! I'm glad I now know how to use these pieces of equipment, this will help me in the future.


I also learnt how to use programmes such as 'final cut pro' and 'motion' that I had never even heard of before! It was difficult to get to terms with at first but when you are constantly using certain programmes you eventually learn how they work, which I did.


Another thing I learnt are rules when filming, there should never really be any head space and the rule of three, things I had never heard of before either.


I also learnt about different shot types and angles, including;

• Close up
• Mid-shot
• Establishing shot

ETC.

Comparisons

Comparing both our rough cut and final teen movie, I can see major positive differences.
With our rough cut, no non-diagetic nor diagetic sound was added. Personally without other sounds besides narrative, I found my rough cut rather boring.
Once music was added I really enjoyed watching our final teen movie, especially when the idents were added. The ident's make our film look more realistic and professional. Once we added fades and slow motion too, our film became even more interesting! With all our good shots the transitions etc went really well also.
We also removed some scenes as the shots were either not focused and did not flow well.

Things I found difficult

I find it particularely difficult to come to terms with using new equipment and digital media. Filming was a bit of an uphill struggle at first because we didn't realise the importance of the tripod(evidently shown in our first rough cut). For this reason, we had to re-film and ended up changing our plot at the same time. I also found it hard learning how to use Final Cut Pro as I haven't used any editing programs as advanced as this one before. In addition, we used Motion to create an ident for our movie and not many teachers knew how to use it leaving us to our own devices to figure out how it works. This was quite hard at first and it took some time trying to understand how it functioned.

Review from an experienced audience member

I asked my friend in A2 to view my final teen movie in college then tell me what she thought about it. Here is what she said:

"I really enjoyed your teen movie. I feel like it was very realistic and resembled real media products. You followed the conventions of this genre which made it easily recognisable as a teen movie. I particularely liked the range of shots you used as I think this is very important in establishing settings and displaying character emotions etc. The storyline was simple and easy to understand and I wanted to see what happened next."

Choice of sound (editing)

We chose a song from sound cloud (Shot Caller). Usually the sound used for idents are mostly non-lyrical sound, more like music jingles, natural sounds or minimal speech. You never really hear proper songs/music. We decided to go against the conventional way of producing an ident sound as we felt the music we chose went extremely well with our plot and even with the idents.









We thought choosing this song instead of having a normal sound over the ident will be unique and a bit more interesting. As the song relates to the character so we wanted the audience to have that feel.

Finished !

We Have Finally Finished (Yayyyy) 
Took us a whole 5 weeks to finish planning filming and editing
We have worked our socks off. *whew*

 

 

We are very happy to be done. (  Say Cheeseeee :)

Final Teen Film Feedback

We got some feedback from fellow peers in our class about our final teen film, which we finished today (YAY!) Here's what students Bernard and Amra had to say;

We're glad they like it, we worked really hard and are elated that we are finished.

Editing - Last Session

These are some pictures of Group 14 working as a group trying to finish of our film, not long till the deadline.

 

 

 

 

Group 14 working very hard, The editing session, trying to finish off out idents and putting our music on.

This is an example to show you what Final Cur Pro looks like, how we have to make sure everything is in time and each shot is in time. making sure out film flows.

 
This is screen shot to also show how we placed the text above shots and had the music (track 1 ) underneath it so it plays throughout the scene we wanted it in.

Editing (should we use slow motion?)

Shall We Use Slow Motion  ?

After watching the scene where Montell runs away from his menacing bully we thought the scene looked boring when he was just running at the same pace throughout the whole scene. So we added fades and then we decided to maybe add slow motion, after much deliberation we decided to use slow motion within this scene. Here's the feedback we received;

Amra:
Using slow motion is more effective as it actually looks like he is running fast and also makes the scene less boring.

  David: The music goes really well with the slow motion!

 

Mary:
 The slow motion goes well with the scene, as the running scene is quite lengthy and may be boring without the use of slow motion.

Feedback For Rough Cut

Our teacher didn't have many improvements to give to us as group, from our last rough cut we manger improvements and really thought about the story and camera shots before we started  to film.  However there were things that needed to be sorted out, For example, We didn't have any idents which we planning on and different have enough time to up it on.


Also in the middle of sequence, the actors hand is on his face and in the next shot isn't, we were told to fix that. Also we were told to add music on.

And in one of the shots the camera wasn't at focus, so we had to see if that could be fixed.

Rough Cut Final